COURSE NUMBER: MBA243.1
COURSE TITLE: DECISIONS, GAMES, AND STRATEGIES
UNITS OF CREDIT: 3
INSTRUCTOR: Thomas Marschak
E-MAIL ADDRESS: marschak@haas.berkeley.edu
CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION (HTTP URL): http://bspace.berkeley.edu
MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Tuesday and Thursday 11:00AM -
12:30PM
PREREQUISITE(S): No formal prerequisites. But basic
probability concepts (including expected value) will
be needed.
CLASS FORMAT: A mixture of lectures,
class discussions, and classroom experiments.
REQUIRED READINGS: There will be a course reader,
handouts prepared by the instructor, and several cases.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 2/3 weight will be given to the
term paper, 1/6 to homework, and 1/6 to class participation.
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
There are two related themes:
(1) The first half of the course considers Decision Analysis,
which helps a manager to make a decision (launching a new product, choosing a
new technology, locating a new facility) when he/she will not know how good the
decision is until after it's made. The technique helps the decision maker to be
consistent with his/her own beliefs about events that have not yet occurred and
with his/her own attitudes toward risk. If you were retained by the decision
maker as a consultant, a Decision Analysis might be appropriate. In performing
the Analysis, how would you go about probing your client and how would you
defend your procedure and your final advice? The first half of the course aims
to answer these questions by developing some basic principles that the client
seems likely to accept. We will see that if the client does so, then the client
is led to accept the advice provided by the Analysis. To illustrate the ideas,
we will use classroom exercises as well as several cases,
Each case will be presented and discussed by a student team. Some of the cases
are Decision Analyses that were actually performed and others are fictitious.
Special attention will be paid to the option of learning more before making a
final choice. A talk by a decision-analysis practitioner is planned.
(2) The second half of the course pursues the same theme
but now the success of the decision depends on the behavior of one or more
opponents.
This time simple game models will be appropriate. The
questions to be addressed include: How should I bid in an auction? What
strategy should I use in a bargaining situation? Is it useful to acquire a
reputation for toughness in repeated confrontations with the same competitors?
Cases, and classroom (and Computer Lab) exercises, will
illustrate the ideas.
In both parts of the course, homework sets using "toy"
problems, will help to clarify concepts and techniques.
In the term paper you will take a real-world problem that
interests you, and will thoughtfully describe (without necessarily carrying it
out) a Decision Analysis of the problem if it's not one that involves
opponents, or a simple game analysis if it is.
The course grade will depend on the term paper, the
homework problems, and your participation in the case-presentation team to
which you are assigned.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Thomas Marschak has been on the
Haas faculty for many years. He is an economist, whose research interests
include the economics of efficient organizations. He is concerned, most
recently, with the impact of improved information technology on the structure
of well- designed organizations.